


Stories

by fadedorchids



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief suicidal ideation, F/F, M/M, Mai (Avatar)-Centric, Mai is queer and really fucking emo about it, i love her very much, yes this is angsty yes mai is soft and what about it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26152582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadedorchids/pseuds/fadedorchids
Summary: Tomorrow her uncle will ask her if she has any more stories to tell, but Mai thinks she is done with stories.She knows better now.-Alternately: Mai doesn't believe in love until Ty Lee. It hurts, until it doesn't.
Relationships: Azula & Mai (Avatar), Jet/Zuko (Avatar), Mai & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 79





	Stories

Mai has been writing a story.

Maybe it’s not the most original, and maybe it’s a little cliché, and maybe her chubby six-year-old hands haven’t written out the characters quite right, but it’s _her_ story and she’s proud.

Or rather, she _was_ proud, because when she gathered her parents, her aunt, and her uncle in the sitting room and narrated out the tale of a beautiful princess and a fierce warrior and a dragon (and if the warrior and princess happened to share names with her parents, it was pure coincidence), they all clapped politely. Her uncle ruffled her hair and her aunt glanced at her parents and her parents-

They didn’t look nearly as proud as Mai felt.

Her mother comes to tuck her in that night, just like she does every night: with a kiss on Mai’s forehead and a reminder to always be gracious, but it’s different.

“Mai,” her mother says, “you must understand something about the world. Stories are just that. Do not mistake things like true love to be based in reality. It is the stuff of fiction, my sweet.”

“But Mama, you and Daddy are in true love, right?” Mai asks.

In that moment, her mother looks unbearably sad. Mai wishes she wouldn’t. True love isn’t supposed to be sad.

“No, little love. We aren’t.”

Mai gets her kiss on the forehead then, and her reminder to always be gracious, and a simple “good night” from her aunt, who peeks in after her mother has left.

She doesn’t really see what’s that good about it.

Tomorrow her uncle will ask her if she has any more stories to tell, but Mai thinks she is done with stories.

She knows better now.

-

She’s accepted into the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. She hates it.

Of course, her parents were bound to send her off at some point, but Mai is of the opinion that nine is perhaps a little too early, not that she would ever say so.

Love, she has reminded herself every night, is a fantasy. There is duty, yes, and honor, and maybe even devotion, but not love. Not for her, at least.

Distantly, her mother waves goodbye and her father ushers the family into the palanquin, and Mai is alone. The bags are too big for her to lift up, so she sighs (She’s been doing a lot of that lately. Mother calls it angst. Mai calls righteous boredom.) and hefts a strap into her arms, fully intending to drag it along, and then there’s a tap on her shoulder.

“Hello! Do you need help with those? My sisters say I’m super strong!” the owner of the hand that tapped her says, and-

Oh.

The first thing Mai notices are her eyes. They’re big and brown and open and smiling, and Mai has to push down the urge to smile back. Smiles, her father has taught her, are a precious currency and shouldn’t be wasted on ordinary people.

Somehow, this girl doesn’t seem all that ordinary.

“No. I’ve got it.” She responds flatly, and she doesn’t know how exactly she’s managed to crush the stranger’s hopes and dreams, but her face falls a little.

_Always be gracious, Mai._

“Thank you, though. I appreciate the offer,” and then, in a burst of recklessness, “I’m Mai.”

The brown-eyed girl beams and Mai is, for the first time in a long while, proud.

“I’m Ty Lee! It was nice to meet you Mai. I hope we have classes together!” The girl-Ty Lee- bounces off, her braid swinging behind her.

Is this friendship? Mai doesn’t know. Love might be fiction, but maybe friendship isn’t. She supposes she will have to find out.

-

“Ty Lee, I’m not entirely sure if this is allowed.”

“Oh, come on! It’s a party, we’re allowed to have parties! And besides, you wouldn’t want to miss Rin’s birthday, would you?”

“I didn’t mean allowed at school, I meant allowed by Azula. You know how she gets.”

Mai still doesn’t know what friendship is. Is it what she has with Ty Lee, all clasped hands and whispered secrets and a fuzzy feeling in her belly? Or is it Azula and her demands for loyalty and devotion and respect?

She’s not familiar with Ty Lee’s brand of friendship, but Azula’s? She knows how to play those games. She knows that Ty Lee is breaking all the rules.

Last summer, they had been invited to spend the summer with Azula at the palace. Her mother had fussed and preened, her father had lectured her on the importance of levelheadedness and composure, and Ty Lee had bought her a hairpin with a small enamel plum blossom on the end.

“It’s hideous.” Mai had said.

“I knew you would love it! Ty Lee had screeched and launched herself into Mai’s arms. Mother had pursed her lips, then, and Mai drew back. It had been a nice hug, but hugs aren’t allowed. Then or now.

Crown Prince Zuko had been at the front gates to welcome them. Azula jammed a sharp elbow into her ribs and whispered “Well? What do you think of him?”

Mai said he seemed nice. It was, apparently, the wrong answer, because every day that summer she had been forced to spend time with Crown Prince Zuko. She was right, of course. Zuko was a nice person. He named all the turtleducks in his mother’s garden and showed her how to feed them properly. She spent her nights with Ty Lee, comparing their days and listening to the gossip she’s picked up from spying on the kitchen staff. That was nice, too.

Zuko had, one day, sat down with her by the turtleduck pond and said, as casually as if he were discussing the weather, “I see how you look at Ty Lee.”

Mai had never known fear until that moment, but it gripped her stomach and refused to let go. She’s spent all the days and months and years she’s known Ty Lee suppressing that shameful, nameless feeling in her chest when the other girl laughed. Love is a fantasy and love for another girl? Even one as kind and gentle as Ty Lee? It’s dangerous.

She’s not sure what she does next, but Zuko is gripping her shoulders and telling her it was going to be okay, he wouldn’t tell, he’d even pretend to love her if she wanted because she’s his friend and he wants her to be safe.

Mai knows, now, what friendship is. It’s a boy feeding vegetables to turtleducks in a pond and letting her play at a fantasy of caring for him in _that way_ and flicking her in the arm when she gazed at Ty Lee for too long.

Now, though, Zuko isn’t here, and Ty Lee is grabbing her by the hand and laughing and dragging her along through the dark and Mai never wants it to stop.

The feeling in her chest has a name. Mai wishes with all her heart that it didn’t.

-

To escape one’s hidden, shameful feelings and to be shipped off to an Earth Kingdom colony without so much as a goodbye are two very different things.

Ty Lee comes to see her off, crying and twisting her hands in Mai’s sleeve and saying, “You’ll write me, won’t you?” and it would be so easy to kiss away the tears and murmur “Of course I will”, because Ty Lee could ask her for the universe and Mai would give it to her, but her parents are waiting, so instead she says “Yeah. I’ll write,” and smiles, trying hard not to think of how long it will be before she sees Ty Lee again.

Her efforts are fruitless.

Her mother is pregnant, and her father has a new job, and Ty Lee is a tiny speck in the distance waving furiously at the ship, and Mai is all alone.

Maybe she cries herself to sleep that night. It’s not as if there’s anyone there to care anymore.

-

Omashu is the most boring place in the world. So was the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, but at least that had-

No. Mai cannot think of her, will not think of her. It hurts more than helps these days, and Mai’s never been one for hurt.

The only interesting thing is Tom-Tom, who, despite being an annoying wrinkly brat, makes her smile when there’s no one around to see them. Love is real and it is shameful, but not this love. Mai thinks she’d die for her baby brother. She also thinks she’s okay with that.

And then the earthbenders rebel and Tom-Tom is missing and Mai realizes that she might actually have to die for him.

A tiny, rebellious voice in her screams that Tom-Tom’s the only thing left in this place to live for. Mai ignores the voice.

Then, the voice is gone entirely because she’s _there_. In the dusty pits of the Earth Kingdom. Holding her tight.

_Never let go. Stay with me forever_ , screams the voice. Mai stamps it out and hugs her friend back.

They save her brother and lose the avatar, but that’s alright (though she’d never tell Azula that). Ty Lee is here, and so is Azula, and Mai is not alone anymore.

-

Someone at the circus has taught Ty Lee the names of all the stars.

“That one’s Tui, and the other one’s La. Oh, wait, maybe I got them mixed up. I’m sorry Mai, I’m not a very good teacher, am I?”

“Shut up. You’re a good teacher.”

She’s pressed up against Ty Lee’s side and fervently hoping the other girl doesn’t feel her heartbeat through the contact. If she does, she remains blessedly silent. Mai loves her all the more for it.

Love is real, Mai thinks, and it hurts more than anything, and yet she can’t help but feel if this, at the end of her life, was all she ever got of Ty Lee, it will have been enough.

“I know the Great Badgermole is up there somewhere, I know it! Hold on Mai, I need to find it.”

Mai leans her head on Ty Lee’s shoulder.

_Yes. This is enough._

-

Ba Sing Se falls. Zuko is back. Ty Lee looked beautiful in the Kyoshi Warrior makeup. Mai is living a lie.

Kissing Zuko feels fundamentally wrong. She doesn’t think kisses are supposed to feel like that. When she tells him this he says, “I met a boy in Ba Sing Se. He was handsome, I suppose, and nice enough to me. I kissed him. It felt right.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, he tried to kill me, You know how these things go.”

Mai does not know how these things go, considering how this is her first relationship and it’s fake. She thinks that if Ty Lee tried to kill her, she must have done something to deserve it.

She thinks that Ty Lee would never.

But she loves Zuko, even if it’s the wrong kind of love, so she kisses his cheek and tells him “I’d only try to kill you if you really, really screwed up.”

He laughs, and it’s not the same as Ty Lee’s but it’s her best friend’s laugh so maybe that’s okay.

Besides, as long as she’s with Zuko, she can look at Ty Lee whenever she wants, however she wants, free of suspicion. He keeps her safe, and she loves him for it.

It’s still not the same, though. She still wants and wants and can never have.

-

Zuko is gone and Mai, in the palace surrounded by servants and Azula and Ty Lee, has never felt more abandoned.

Surely he knows what this means for her? He must. His note reads:

_Dear Mai,_

_I’m sorry to have to tell you like this, but I’m leaving. I can no longer be a part of what the Fire Nation is doing to the rest of the world. I know I’m leaving you in a difficult position, but you’re strong. I believe you can get through it._

_Love,_

_Zuko_

It isn’t even a letter. He has left her to the coyote wolves and couldn’t be bothered to use official stationery. Mai wants to scream and cry and maybe even kill him, but he isn’t here and her father has always told her to remain levelheaded and her mother once reminded her every night to be gracious.

So, as anyone in her position would, Mai memorizes the letter and burns it and doesn’t scream. Or cry. Or kill Zuko, or even plan to.

Ty Lee asks her if she’s alright.

Mai doesn’t smile, she doesn’t answer. Love is real, and it has burned her, and she cannot love Ty Lee. She cannot bear to see Ty Lee burned.

-

The day it all comes crashing down, Mai has not spoken to Ty Lee in three weeks. It’s safer this way for both of them. She wishes it didn’t hurt quite so much, but she knows that that’s what love does.

Apparently, love also attacks the princess of the Fire Nation for Mai. Love tugs on her arm, begging her to run, a pale imitation of Rin’s birthday party all those years ago. Love whispers the words in Mai’s ear as they are dragged away from each other. Love never hears Mai say them back.

Mai remains at Boiling Rock. Ty Lee goes to a prison in Caldera City.

All she has ever wanted was for Ty Lee to be safe. For Ty Lee to never want for freedom and the ability to stand out because she knows how Ty Lee loathes sameness.

Now, Ty Lee is confined, when she joined the circus to taste freedom. She wears the same uniform as every other prisoner despite her need to not look just like everyone else.

Ty Lee could never look like everyone else, though. She glows in the sun and laughs like the rain and her eyes shine like the stars she’s so terrible at identifying and she doesn’t know Mai loves her.

Maybe Mai cries. Maybe she doesn’t. Her uncle gives her special treatment she never asked for, and she’s still wasting away.

That little voice who has kept dormant for months rears its head again, whispers venom into Mai’s ears. This time, she almost listens.

Zuko had been sorry, but sorry couldn’t protect Ty Lee.

Sorry hadn’t saved her from being burned.

-

Her uncle tells her one day that “The war is over. The Firelord’s bending is gone. His traitor son is taking the throne.”

Mai declines to point out that she is also a traitor.

Uncle uncuffs her wrists and opens her cell. The traitor son, it seems, has released her.

(He has also released Ty Lee, Uncle says. He looks at her knowingly. There is no hatred there, and Mai is reminded of how all those years ago he ruffled her hair and asked for another story. She thinks she loves her uncle.)

The trip to the caldera passes in a blur because all Mai can think of is _herherherherher_ and it doesn’t burn anymore. She’s wearing her old clothes, her hair in her old buns, practicing her smile in the window of the airship.

It turns out her smile didn’t need all that much practice.

Because Ty Lee is there when the airship docks, flinging herself into Mai’s arms. She is crying, and this time Mai does kiss away her tears. They are salty and leave a strange wetness on her lips, but it doesn’t matter anymore because Ty Lee is kissing her and the whole world has fallen into place.

Later, she will tell Zuko that she’s “still so incredibly angry, but Zuko, she kissed me and it felt _right_.”

Later, she will visit Azula in her new hospital room and warn her that she is not forgiven, but she is nonetheless loved. She gets a face full of blue fire, and she can’t find it in herself to be angry.

Later, Ty Lee will curl up in Mai’s bed with her and murmur “Tell me a story?” And Mai will hold her tight and whisper back,

“Of course I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first fic, so any comments and constructive criticism are very very welcomed and appreciated! Thank you all so much :)


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